Judge cites 'weaponization' in tossing charges for ex-FBI agents accused
of lying about Hunter Biden
[November 03, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal
complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress
about Hunter Biden, citing what he said was the “weaponization” of
President Donald Trump's Justice Department just before the midterm
elections.
In a scathing, hourlong ruling read from the bench, U.S. Magistrate
Judge Zia Faruqui said the investigation that produced the charges
against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides was rushed, conducted at the
behest of Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel and dogged by “critical
mistakes" that require the dismissal of the case.
“I am deeply troubled by what has happened here," Faruqui said. “What
has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than
weaponization.”
The ruling may not bring a permanent end to the matter because the
Justice Department still has the option of pursuing an indictment, even
though it has struggled during the Trump administration to persuade
grand juries in the nation’s capital to deliver criminal charges in
politically sensitive prosecutions like this one.
In the meantime, though, it amounts to a resounding rebuke of a
department the judge said could have sought an indictment at any time
but instead opted for political purposes to file a criminal complaint in
the immediate run-up to Tuesday's midterm voting.
“I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a
calendar,” Faruqui said, alluding to the proximity of the charges to the
elections, which will determine control of Congress for the last two
years of the Republican president's second term.
The Justice Department had accused the two former officials of falsely
downplaying to Congress their knowledge of investigations into President
Joe Biden's son and of a laptop the younger Biden dropped off at a
computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. But Faruqui said the Justice
Department failed to establish in its complaint that the statements made
during the 2023 testimony were intentionally false, or had impeded the
congressional investigation for which the two were summoned to testify.
He also said the former officials had no reason to deceive.
“Without motive, without direct evidence, I have nothing" to go on to
establish the probable cause needed to affirm the complaint, Faruqui
said.
Lawyers for Floris, who after the ruling hugged supporters outside the
courtroom, said the “so-called prosecution was nothing more than a
politically motivated smear campaign aimed at scoring political points
before the midterm elections."
“The charges brought under the clearly discredited authority of the
Department of Justice should never have been brought in the first
place,” the attorneys said in a statement.
The Justice Department said in a statement posted on X that it disagreed
with Faruqui's ruling and was evaluating its options.
The judge identified a political motive and ‘critical mistakes’
The dismissal followed a dramatic three-day hearing last week in which
an FBI agent who had been assigned to investigate the case conceded that
the inquiry had been regarded around his office as something of a “witch
hunt” and that he himself had considered it a “huge distraction” from
his ordinary work.
The agent, Bryan Witt, said the investigation was launched one day after
a primetime election security speech from Trump in which the president
rehashed longstanding grievances over his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, a
Democrat. He said the investigation was assigned to his Kansas City,
Missouri, office and said Patel, a close Trump ally, demanded and
received regular updates — something Witt said was unusual.
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In issuing his order Monday, Faruqui recounted the pressure to
deliver that Witt said he operated under and faulted the Trump
administration for a rushed investigation that undermined the
results.
“The rush to charge led to critical mistakes,” he said, citing
investigative shortcomings and factual mistakes in charging
documents.
The judge's concerns about the case were apparent from the first
time Floris and Benavides appeared in his courtroom, when he raised
questions about why the Justice Department had charged them through
a criminal complaint — which is more typically done when
investigators have a pressing need to take a defendant into custody
— as opposed to an indictment that requires a grand jury's approval.
“It is self-evident that the U.S. attorney's office is avoiding
taking this case to a grand jury,” Faruqui said Monday.
Last week, the Justice Department failed to secure a grand jury
indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House staffer
who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against Trump before a
House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol
insurrection.
Then, at a preliminary hearing last week, Faruqui criticized the
Justice Department for filing overnight an amended complaint with an
additional criminal charge straight to the docket instead of first
clearing the new charge with the court — something he said he had
never seen before.
The case concerns years-old questions about a laptop
The criminal complaint centered on a laptop the Justice Department
says Hunter Biden abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware, computer
repair shop in 2019. The laptop’s existence was revealed in an
October 2020 New York Post story that described email correspondence
found on the computer concerning the younger Biden’s foreign
business dealings.
Prosecutors alleged that Floris and Benavides misled Congress about
their knowledge of the laptop when questioned in 2023 by the House
Judiciary Committee as the Republican-led panel was conducting its
own investigation of the Biden family.
At the FBI, the two officials had been leaders of the FBI's Foreign
Influence Task Force, which was established during the first Trump
administration to track foreign influence campaigns and was
disbanded last year. They have for years been targets of
congressional Republican criticism, including because of 2020
briefings to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on the threat of
Russian disinformation that the GOP lawmakers said had the effect of
attempting to discredit an investigation into the Bidens that they
were doing.
A prosecutor argued last week that the former officials may have had
an incentive to minimize their knowledge of the laptop because Joe
Biden was president at the time they were questioned and to distance
themselves from the fact that the task force did not publicly
correct a narrative advanced by some Democrats and former
intelligence officials that the laptop might somehow have been
connected to Russian disinformation.
Defense lawyers vigorously rejected the idea that their clients had
any motive to lie and suggested any incorrect statements that were
made were the result of ambiguous questions or faulty memories — not
an intent to deceive.
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